Tag Archives: transformation

I was Born To Run. At five years of age I was The Flash. Like the gingerbread man who ran away from the farmer’s wife, I recall breaking free from the confinement of a nurse’s home office in Nyeri, Kenya, this, despite people’s restricting grip, and bolting panic-stricken across the lawn, like a young Thompson gazelle pursued turn-for-turn by a cheetah, toward what I perceived to be a sanctuary–a distant dairy shed. Despite playing dead (hiding), as a gazelle might do, eventually I was caught and carried kicking and squirming back to the nurse’s inoculation needle.

From then until high school graduation I ran like the wind of Forrest Gump, obeying his Jenny’s instructions, “If you’re ever in trouble, don’t be brave. You just run, OK? Just run away.” Run I could. Run I did. Despite my young age it seemed I always was the Lone Survivor in the tag/tackle game of American Eagles, and my running athleticism earned me the rugby nickname “shadow dancer.”

Teenage sprints morphed into young adulthood jogs, where I ran non-competitively in mid-to-long distance races.

In young middle age I now occasionally run, but more often walk. If pressed for why I blame my wife (her ailing knees prevent us from jogging together), but truth be told I prefer walking.

Why, you ask?

Partly blame it on life having more problems than I can reasonably manage, accommodate and resolve.

FIRST, walking, unlike running, helps you think on your feet.

As Willard Spiegelman notes in Seven Pleasures: Essays on Happiness, for those of us whose profession has more to do with words and ideas, than motorized giant Caterpillars, sledge hammers, or physical exertion, walking involves and unites “mind, body, and breath (spirit) in a harmonious process that at once releases and excites different kinds of energy.”

Walking, therefore, is an effective prod or facilitator of self-knowledge, meditation and contemplation. In a real sense, walking enables, even encourages self-change, self-revision, self-remake, self-reinvention, and self-modification. In this, Spiegelman is spot on.

Søren Kierkegaard reputedly wrote his niece, “When I have a problem I walk, and walking makes it better. Do not lose your desire to walk; every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”

If Kierkegaard felt compelled to instruct his niece on the importance of walking in the early 1800’s, how much more we, who live in so-called developed twenty-first century countries need to be reminded!

During a 2001 academic conference in Geneva, a Scottish colleague’s first, and apparently lasting impression of a recent visit to the West Coast of the United States was how shoppers park in front of one shopping mall entrance, enter, purchase, exit, then drive to others points of the mall versus walk its relatively short length.

Accustomed to motorized transport, we forget that walking used to be our primary means of transportation.

A SECOND reason I now prefer walking over running is that walking offers a combination experience of ordinary plus the unexpected.

Each time I walk in the neighborhood across from my home, which unlike my own adjoins a nearby eco greenbelt, there’s a constancy that combines allure, monotony, and the unexpected.

To date, I’ve discovered about $20, found myself suddenly parallel and within five feet of a skunk on the prowl, come upon a house that was lit up like a bonfire replete with emergency personnel and an entire neighborhood present for what seemed a giant s’mores or weenie cookout, informed a home owner of a large yet harmless snake that crossed the road in front of me and slithered up alongside their house, pitied a young screech-owl that evidently was hit by a passing motorist, seen near collisions of car and deer and witnessed newborn fawns with their mothers, documented neighborhood political rivalry, and seen first-hand the aging and changing demographics of a neighborhood, which mirrors that of our nation.

If I’m able to document these few or more type experiences–from mere one-hour walks, several times per week–how much more of the ebb and flow of life am I, or you, or we, missing out on because we’re speeding past in a motorized “two-ton piece of metal” or entombed within the protective yet insular walls of our own home castles?

The FINAL, perhaps most important reason to become a more frequent, intentional walker, is that “like dancing, walking becomes an exercise in civility.” It results in an increased “inner awareness and an imaginative sympathy with, and for, other people.”

I’m a new participant in Richmond’s Community Trustbuilding Fellowship, a training initiative begun by Initiatives of Change. It’s a five weekend program that develops “community trustbuilders.” A trustbuilder is an individual, like myself, who has a passion for, and receives methodology training in facilitating community dialogue. The objective, as I understand it, is the transformation of communities polarized by race, culture, politics, economics, education and social inequities, into communities of trust, which, then, of course, it is hoped will become more effective in addressing and acting upon symptom and systemic inequities and injustices.

Week Two is entitled “Healing History,” where we’ll take a walk around Richmond. We will retrace the many “slave steps,” in an effort to better understand and develop a sensitive understanding of what life was like for so many enslaved people. But–in the spirit of understanding opposing positions, and facilitating dialogue between polarized communities, we’ll also gain a more appreciative understanding of the “white experience,” often synonymous with “white privilege.”

My doctoral method of study and training in history of religions is phenomenology. Basically, it’s a method of learning that prioritizes awareness, understanding and knowledge acquisition from the underside of history, the ordinary, or “common” person’s perspective versus history’s “victors’ perspective,” which is the narrative of most history textbooks.

In other words, phenomenology requires experiential, personal engagement with the object of one’s study (people of different culture, socioeconomic, political or religious faith) versus mere textbook knowledge, or that acquired from media sources or so-called “experts.”

It’s a transformative method of learning or unlearning, depending upon one’s perspective, because the resulting “relationships of trust” you experience with “different others” not only are informative in terms of knowledge, but also destructive of pre-existing stereotypes, plus, they are self- and other-transformative, in that your/their own life will likely be positively changed simply by experiencing and participating in the life of “the different other.”

SO . . . whatever your profession or life situation, do yourself a favor and become more frequent and intentional in taking walks. Start small. Walk the block. But while you’re walking keep your eyes, ears, mind and heart open. Who knows what or who you might unexpectedly encounter, which might not only change your own life, but contribute collectively to the transformation of your community, and ultimately, one person by one person, the entire world.

I’m currently reading How Does It Feel To Be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America by Moustafa Bayoumi.

Have you ever given thought to what daily life must be like for individual “problems” of society? That is, have you ever personally, first-hand, or vicariously via imagination shared life with them for a day or more?

If you haven’t, I encourage you to do so. But do so apart from a “group experience,” where vulnerability of shared experiences are diffused too broadly and minimal transformation occurs in your life.

It seems “problem people” in the USA could apply in varying measures to any or all of the following people: Muslims, Arabs, the poor or anyone benefiting from a government subsidy, gay, illegal immigrants, the unemployed, someone with AIDS, single-headed households (especially women on welfare), anyone who doesn’t speak “American,” etc. In the not-too-distant past, of course, “problem people” included Native Americans, Catholics, Irish, Japanese, etc.

During their colonizing administration of South Africa, British officials frequently referred to blacks by the phrase “the native problem” (I do not deny the existence of far more racially derogatory terms used as well). Although more academic and finessed descriptions could be given as to what exactly was implied by “the native problem,” in effect, it boiled down to this:

There were too many of “them” – specifically, “uncivilized” and “un-Christianized” blacks living in near proximity to whites. What to do about it since the advancement of civilization depended upon native labor, as well as upon making consumers of them?

Fear, then, became the persistent and pervasive “white burden.” For example, in 1838 Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, white fear of imminent Zulu attack prompted the usual practice of firing a gun upon arrival of the mail to be discontinued, and in its place was substituted the ringing of a bell.

Explorer Richard Burton wrote in 1861, “I unhesitatingly assert—and all unprejudiced travelers will agree with me—that the world still wants the black hand. Enormous tropical regions yet await the clearing and draining operations by the lower races, which will fit them to become the dwelling-places of civilized man.” Scottish evangelist, Henry Drummond, expressed in Tropical Africa that the fertility of Central Africa was a liability for civilization’s advance, because in such a climate it was difficult “to create new wants” among Africans.

My life, personally, and that of my family have been exceedingly gifted, blessed, from knowing many “problem people” over the years. Miriam is one such person. Initially she was a South African “problem,” given that she was a refugee from a not-too-distant neighboring country. Destitute and desperate, with small children of her own, she was given a lifeline through the kindness of a few Catholic sisters. After regaining her footing, Miriam identified an unfortunate niche in South African society – destitute mothers, unable to adequately care for their small children for economic or health reasons, who do not want to give up their children for adoption or for a government mandated two-year foster care, but merely find a temporary and loving caretaker until which time they manage to reclaim life – and determined to make a difference in the lives of mothers and their children, despite her lack of resources. This former “problem person” isn’t famous or successful by celebrity definition, yet for those of us who know her, she’s a Mother Teresa of South Africa. Thank you Miriam for mentoring me and my family on how best to be a “problem!”